Pre-Congress & ICCB Lunchtime Workshops

Seven pre-congress workshops will take place on Saturday 20 July and/or Sunday 21 July at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel or at the Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel. All pre-congress workshops require payment. Click here for one comprehensive list of pre-congress workshops, short courses, and focus groups (including room numbers). Pre-congress and lunchtime workshops and descriptions can be found below.

Nearly two dozen lunchtime workshops that take during ICCB. Lunchtime workshops will be held at the Baltimore Convention Center from 13:00-14:00 everyday from 21 July - 25 July. Lunchtime workshops are free to attend, but there is an attendee capacity (see descriptions below).

Conservationists continually face the complexities of human interactions in their efforts. Conflicts that are seemingly between people and wildlife or other natural resources are more often conflicts between people about wildlife. Unfortunately, these issues at the center of conservation conflicts often serve as proxies for less tangible social conflicts that often undermine conservation programs. HWCC's collaborative learning process addresses the theory, principles and practice of transforming complex conservation conflicts into sustainable, positive change. Participants draw on best practices from identity-based conflict transformation to improve their capacity to analyze complex conflict dynamics, anticipate emerging conflict, and address old conflicts that may impede new progress. By accurately analyzing social conflicts and facilitating appropriate processes for addressing them, participants can more effectively determine root causes of conflict, build a foundation for trust and respect among stakeholders, and unearth fertile ground for cultivating sustainable coexistence. In an evaluation assessing the long term, field-based impact and value of the HWCC training, 100% of respondents said that every wildlife professional, regardless of role or rank, needed conflict transformation. Over 95% of respondents reported sustained, long-term improvement in their ability to address conservation conflicts as a direct result of the training.

Understanding how environmental laws intersect with conservation science is critical in effectively engaging stakeholders in policy decision-making. This workshop will provide a user-friendly introduction to U.S. environmental laws as they apply to the protection of biodiversity, and will provide attendees an opportunity to engage with the SCB policy program. The workshop will focus on the aspects of environmental law and policy that are most likely to be encountered by students and early-career scientists in their work and interactions with the public. This workshop will provide an overview of the legal framework for biodiversity protection in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, National Forest Management Act, and Clean Water Act. The workshop will also focus on common themes in conservation policy, including the use of the best available science, consideration of cumulative impacts, and addressing scientific uncertainty/allocation of risk in policy decisions affecting biodiversity. The workshop will also explore ethical questions that can arise when conservation science is applied/misapplied to policy decision-making. Ultimately the workshop will provide practical skills and tools that will help conservation scientists contribute to the betterment of U.S. environmental laws, regulations, and policies. We will use regional case studies from the eastern U.S. to explore these topics in greater detail.

We propose to discuss how a system for prioritizing the conservation of imperiled species could apply to the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). Other countries and regions, including Australia and New Zealand, have recently developed and applied imperiled species prioritization systems in response to inadequate funding for conservation. The United States, however, has no workable system for prioritizing conservation of species listed under the ESA, even though funding is woefully inadequate to conserve most listed species. Prioritization is particularly timely because the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is likely to list over 200 species under the ESA in the next six years, but is unlikely to receive enough funding to adequately conserve these species. ESA prioritization will connect multiple disciplines. Biologists are needed to design a prioritization system and apply it to individual species. Broader stakeholders are needed to make value judgments about what factors to prioritize (e.g., genetic diversity, ecological role, cost of conservation). Policymakers and lawyers are needed to determine how a prioritization system could be implemented in a legally-defensible, efficient, and feasible manner. And communication and budgeting specialists are needed to help market the system to lawmakers and other non-conservation professionals.

Conservation success requires effective leadership. However, in traditional academic training or conservation careers, few opportunities exist for intentional leadership development. To address this need within the SCB community, we propose a professionally designed two-day workshop focusing on tangible leadership skills and practices that participants can use immediately. The format will be "learning by doing" through interactive exercises. Participants will learn about their own leadership strengths, and gain tools for evaluating and choosing effective leadership actions. Workshop exercises will be designed for sharing with colleagues at home institutions, to help multiply impact. Organized by a group of Smith Fellows and colleagues, the workshop brings Smith Fellowship training to a larger segment of SCB. The ultimate goal is to support effective personal and collective efforts to conserve the richness of life on Earth. This workshop supports ICCB 2013's theme of Connecting systems, disciplines, and stakeholders because it: 1) emphasizes leadership approaches that help build integration across different fields, sectors, and stakeholders; and 2) draws on the fields of leadership studies and organizational development, two disciplines that have been underutilized in conservation. We intend to link this workshop with a series of follow-up activities to reinforce leadership skills and build a support network for participants. Please note the application period for this workshop closed on 15 March.

Policy and decision makers in the U.S. government make decisions everyday that affect ecological systems at home and abroad, often resulting in long-term impacts to biodiversity. The implications of these decisions may not be obvious to those who make them, as few U.S. Senators and Representatives have staff with backgrounds in the natural sciences. In the Executive branch, agencies with a mandate to conserve natural resources include scientists. However, incorporating science into decisions is often of lower priority for these agencies than furthering more political objectives. Conservation scientists are highly knowledgeable stakeholders in the policy process. They can help ensure that the best available science informs decisions that impact biodiversity. To do this effectively, it is critical to develop the necessary skills to communicate in a policy-relevant manner and to understand how and where non-Federal scientists can become involved. Through a combination of panel discussions and activities, participants will learn how to contribute to policy processes in the Legislative and Executive branches and international forums. The workshop will provide tools and skills for successfully communicating with policy and decision makers. Students and senior scientists will benefit from the workshop as they learn to engage in policy directly or as mentors and mentees. Policy fellowships, training programs and networking opportunities will be highlighted.

This workshop will introduce the HexSim wildlife simulation model (www.hexsim.net). HexSim allows users to construct PVA and other models without having to write any computer code. These models can range from simple or hypothetical to complex and ecologically realistic. HexSim is spatially-explicit, individual-based, multi-population, multi-stressor, and is ideal for exploring the impacts on wildlife of interacting disturbance regimes. This model is the result of many years of intensive development, and it is still fairly new to the scientific community. HexSim will be useful for many wildlife conservation and management studies, for research into stressor interactions, disease ecology, landscape genetics, and many other topics. HexSim runs on Windows, is distributed free of charge, has a complete graphical user interface, and comes with documentation and worked examples. This workshop will be led by the two researchers principally responsible for HexSim's development. The workshop will begin with an overview of HexSim applications and strategies. We will then use lectures and worked examples to introduce model design, the running of simulations, and the analysis of model results. Finally, participants will be introduced to more complex applications including species' interactions, disease modeling, and landscape genetics. All training materials will be provided by the instructors. Participants need only bring a laptop computer running Windows.

SCB Chapters provide the crucial role as the grassroots of the international Society. They serve to actively connect conservationists locally through educational programs, volunteer activities, regional conservation meetings, policy action, and more. This workshop will provide an opportunity to exchange of ideas with other Chapter leaders and active members on how to run and sustain a local chapter, conservation initiatives, local policy action, and stewardship projects. This workshop is geared toward strengthening the skills, knowledge sets, and competencies (i.e. capacity-building) of all attendees. We will have guided discussion on chapter logistics, vision, and activities; as well as ways to strengthen the continuum among chapters, sections, and the global society. The format will include presentations by chapter members and experienced leaders followed by stimulating discussion.

You do not have to be a current Chapter member to attend! All ICCB attendees are welcome. And if you are a current Chapter member, your attendance and participation are specifically requested, no matter your current level of Chapter involvement. For up-to-date information on the workshop content and related Chapter activities, please visit: http://scbchapters.weebly.com/chapters-news--events.html

Lunch-time Workshops

This brown-bag lunch hour event will provide students with the opportunity to learn about the best practices for networking in the conservation arena. The three primary topics that this workshop will cover are: (1) how to make initial contacts, (2) how to create a strong elevator speech, and (3) how to create and sustain professional relationships. A question and answer session will be included for other topics. Students are encouraged to bring their own lunch or purchase one at the conference center ,as lunches are not provided.

Conservation social science has developed rapidly in the past decade, but efforts to train the next generation of conservation scholars and practitioners have not kept pace. As a result, conservation researchers often think within narrow disciplinary silos, while conservation practitioners frequently neglect to integrate social science insights into policy and practice. This workshop will assemble thought leaders and early career professionals from across disciplines (natural and social sciences), organizations (government, NGOs, academia, donors), career stages, and geographies to explore the state of conservation social science capacity building around the world and to develop a vision for the next decade. The workshop will consider existing tools, resources, and curricula, the heterogeneous audiences for these social science products, and the role of both novel and traditional capacity-building mechanisms. Through participatory dialogue, the workshop will inventory existing resources for conservation social science training and lay the foundation for strategic investments to catalyze a more interdisciplinary, well-rounded community of conservation scholars and practitioners. ICCB 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of the SCB Social Science Working Group. The proposed workshop will form a critical venue to assess the evolution of conservation social science training and to advance the interdisciplinary capacity required to effectively conserve biodiversity.

A biocultural approach - implying a close link between biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity - is fundamentally interdisciplinary and connects multiple stakeholders, thus closely aligning with the ICCB theme of "Connecting systems, disciplines, and stakeholders." Interest in biocultural approaches is growing because conservation initiatives must increasingly work with diverse local stakeholders to advance conservation objectives. A growing consensus in conservation practice posits that initiatives are more effective and sustainable when they explicitly integrate human needs and aspirations with conservation objectives. A biocultural approach takes as a given that human societies and the environment affect and are affected by one another, necessitating a more holistic conservation practice. The biocultural diversity concept finds analogues in the concept of social-ecological systems and National Science Foundation's program in Coupled Human and Natural Systems. This workshop will introduce the history, origin and application of the biocultural diversity concept and will address questions such as: How do you design a project that addresses biocultural diversity? How do you find funding for such a project? How do you translate results from biocultural research into action? Workshop participants will evaluate existing projects to identify factors that lead to success and will propose methods to reorient traditional conservation projects towards a biocultural perspective.

Conservation biology researchers are required to implement human subjects protections when their research efforts involve questionnaires, surveys and interviews with human subjects as they conduct interventions across the world. Both communities/ cultural groups need to ensure that research exploitation, community stigma harms and culturally-inappropriate research practices can be prevented.Research activities should produce beneficial change and positive outcomes to their local communities -requiring complex decision-making for research designs methods/ outc/omes, attuned to contextual and specific cultural conditions. Research ethics training in human subjects protections for conservation biology must therefore include both individual human subjects protections (beneficence, respect for autonomy, justice) and respecting individuals as members of place-based communities or indigenous/tribal groups. Cultural groups within local communities in the US and internationally have particular histories and traditions, group processes and research experiences that are important to learn about. Course readers with applied ethics articles, case studies, internat'l ethics guidance will be provided.Training slides will be reviewed that highlight important recommendations for ethically-appropriate research from existing literature - all fiting well with the theme of multidisciplinary connections as anthropology, ethics, environmental justice are combined with conservation biology.

This workshop will provide advice to participants, especially students, on the fine art of attending a conference and making effective presentations. Topics to be covered will include: posters (how to fit 5,000 words into a square meter), oral presentations (how to fit 5,000 words into 15 slides), and networking (how to fit 5,000 words into a beer). In other words, we will take a light-hearted look at some ways to make attending a conference an enjoyable and productive experience. The session will be presented by the lead author of "Saving the Earth as a Career: Advice on becoming a conservation professional."

Build them and they will live. That is the simple message in this documentary that looks at the issue of highways, and some of the pioneering solutions that exist to prevent roadkill and reconnect landscapes across highways. In the Rocky Mountains we have one of the last best chances in the world to maintain a fully functioning ecosystem with all the native large carnivores, but roads are a major problem. Everything from grizzly bears to wolverines and ducks to salamanders need to get across roads safely for breeding, to find food, adapt to climate change, or to migrate. Highway Wilding tells the story of challenges that roads present to wildlife, the dedicated people working on this issue, and how we can implement creative solutions through building overpasses, underpasses and fencing for wildlife. The documentary is a great fit for the conference's themes as the film focuses on connecting systems, disciplines and stakeholders in a multitude of ways. The wildlife crossing structures featured in the film physically connect wildlife, habitat and landscapes. Connections and collaborations between diverse disciplines and stakeholders including scientists and researchers, transportation planners, governmental policy-makers and decision-makers, and conservation advocates are critical to the realization of highway crossing structures for wildlife and large-scale landscape connectivity. After seeing this film, you will never drive down a highway in the same way again.

Conservation policy assumes that national parks and protected areas (PAs) are permanent fixtures on the landscape, but recent research demonstrates widespread - yet largely overlooked - PA downgrading, downsizing and degazettement (PADDD). To examine the historical and future implications of PADDD, we compiled and analyzed a global dataset of thousands of proposed and enacted PADDD events. Since 1900, PADDD has affected over 500,000 km2 in over 600 PAs in at least 60 countries. Though in theory PADDD can advance conservation goals, our findings suggest that extractive industries are the largest proximate cause of PADDD. Proposed PADDD events associated with extractive industries currently jeopardize hundreds of PAs, including global conservation icons: Virunga National Park (D.R. Congo), Selous Game Reserve (Tanzania), and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (USA). This workshop will bring together agency officials, NGO representatives, ecologists, social scientists, and donors across disciplines to: 1) examine the scientific and policy implications of PADDD and potential applications of the PADDD dataset; 2) explore PADDDtracker.org, an online map-based database that combines wiki-based technology, GIS, and traditional field-based science to collect and deliver PADDD data; 3) build a research agenda to examine the implications of PADDD for conservation planning, PA implementation and management, and monitoring and evaluation.

In the increasingly heterogeneous societies of North America and Western Europe, conservation remains a monoculture. Understanding the experiences of students, post-docs, and early-career scientists from underrepresented groups in North America, Western Europe, and key countries including South Africa and Australia will be crucial to moving conservation forward in these areas - and participating in the BioDiverse Student Workshop is a great way to identify the needs, challenges, motivations, and opportunities facing underrepresented students in conservation. Scientists! Help contribute to securing the future of conservation. Learn to recruit, engage, and mentor students from underrepresented communities in these regions with the BioDiverse workshop. Students! Stop by to share your experiences, learn from the experiences of others, meet other students, hear about current projects, and learn new strategies for staying engaged and empowered as you grow into your conservation identity. The future of conservation depends on you! The findings of this focus group will be discussed in greater detail in the lunch-time workshop Enhancing Diversity in the Conservation Science Workforce: What are the barriers to increasing diversity and what can organizations like SCB do? on 24 July.

A vast network of roads and marine highways crisscrosses the planet, transporting people and goods over global distances with substantial environmental impacts. For instance, the ecological footprint of roads is known to extend up to a kilometer on either side of an individual road (road effect zone) with cumulative effects of dense road networks in some regions impacting up to 15-20% of total surface area (e.g., continental USA). Marine transportation networks and associated ship transport lanes also create migration and other problems for wildlife, including acoustic pollution and collision-related mortality. In contrast, areas with low road densities and/or low-traffic volume (marine and terrestrial) and those with no roads (e.g., roadless areas in the USA, South America, Asia, Africa) are a conservation priority globally because they provide habitat for road-adverse wildlife, have characteristic ecological processes, are relatively resistant to weed invasions, act as strongholds for aquatic species, and provide climatic refugia. In some terrestrial regions (e.g., western Europe), only low-density roads with low traffic volume remain and these areas are building blocks for re-wilding landscapes. This symposium will provide a global synthesis of impacts of vast transportation networks and a region by region and a global synthesis on the importance of intact areas showcasing new intactness and human footprint technologies.

In a world in which a species becomes extinct every 20 minutes, photos and films of these species are often all that remain. The alarming rate at which extinction is occurring, coupled with the public's lack of awareness, points to a critical need for increased dissemination of engaging and accurate conservation information supporting the preservation of one of Earth's vital life systems: its species. ARKive, the Noah's Ark of the internet, is a unique global initiative gathering films, photographs and audio recordings of the world's threatened species into one centralized digital library. Staff researchers are creating comprehensive and enduring multimedia species profiles making a key resource freely available for scientists, conservationists, educators and the general public at www.ARKive.org. This B.Y.O.L. or "Bring Your Own Laptop" session begins with an introduction to the role wildlife films and images play in promoting threatened species conservation by bringing a diverse range of stakeholders together behind a single cause. Then, a short review of ARKive's history will be presented followed by a step-by-step guided tour to searching the collection online and a discussion of ways the 100,000+ images and films of threatened species around the world can be used. Finally, participants will learn how to contribute their work and expertise and be given a tutorial exploring ARKive Education, a portal to lesson plans, activities and games promoting conservation education.

Biodiversity is facing a crisis at genetic, species, and ecosystem levels, with serious negative consequences for the delivery of ecosystem services and human well-being. As many of the drivers of this crisis are area-based (i.e. habitat loss), many of the solutions must be area-based as well, in order to guide decision-makers on where such area protection is necessary. Addressing the need for criteria for the identification of areas contributing to the global persistence of biodiversity is part of an on-going consultation. This new global standard will build on existing approaches. It will span across freshwater, terrestrial and marine systems; it requires the involvement of a wide array of disciplines, such as geography, spatial planning, conservation science, ecological science, genetics, population ecology, ecosystems, or species and involves many different sectors of society, both within and beyond the conservation community. ICCB is a unique opportunity to get feedback on this integrated methodology from key players from a wide range of disciplines. Building on the recommendations of an initial framework consultation, the workshop will focus on the technical specifications of the criteria, from the integration of criteria in the different systems to the various levels of biodiversity organizations, including the delineation in different contexts of application.

Career counselors will lead a brown-bag lunch workshop to help students learn how to transform a résumé from average to outstanding! This session will cover successful techniques to format your résumé, to incorporate key action words, and help you establish your brand so that you can present your accomplishments with effective and applicable details tailored to your audience. There will also be a peer-revision session workshop and opportunities for you to get advice from our career counselors, so make sure you bring your résumé. Students are welcome to bring their own lunches or purchase one at the conference center as lunches are not provided. Pre-registration is required.

Description: Enhancing diversity in the U.S. conservation science workforce is essential to Connecting Systems, Disciplines, and Stakeholders because there is a clear disconnect between the diversity of the U.S. resident population and the constituencies participating in the biodiversity conservation workforce. The percent of total U.S. bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees earned in the conservation sciences by American Indian/Alaska Natives, African-Americans, and Hispanics/Latinos are in the single digits. A more diverse workforce is crucial to achieving the goals of biodiversity conservation, which is multidisciplinary and international in scope and requires engaging diverse audiences and stakeholders. Broadening the training of conservation scientists to include constituencies that have not been involved historically in conservation efforts will be key to advancing leadership and success in conservation. Our workshop will introduce participants to the institutional and structural barriers that prevent the equal participation of historically underrepresented groups (HUGs) in the conservation sciences. We will also discuss how participants can develop skills for mentoring students from HUGs and build networks to recruit and retain students from HUGs in our field. A key goal of the workshop will be to evaluate and generate recommendations for the Society of Conservation Biology to take action towards increasing the diversity of the conservation science workforce.

Blue Ventures (BV) is an award-winning marine conservation organisation that works with local communities to conserve threatened marine and coastal environments, both protecting biodiversity and alleviating poverty. In response to an unmet health need within coastal communities, and recognising the impact of poor health and rapid population growth on the environment, BV successfully integrated health services and education, to form an integrated population, health and environment (PHE) programme. Now in its 6th year, BV's PHE programme has proven a highly successful model for meeting the health care needs of communities in south-western Madagascar, as well as adding significant value to its conservation efforts. BV recognises that many communities living in areas of high biodiversity, and who are the custodians of this biodiversity, face similar issues of a lack of access to healthcare services, and that this has an adverse impact on the environment. This workshop presents an opportunity to share with the conservation community the lessons learned and to empower others to adopt similar strategies

Effective conservation is founded on governance systems that are able to establish and enforce compliance with policies, rules, and regulations that support sustainable use and conservation of natural resources. To-date there are no simple, low-cost, and replicable ways to measure and understand the strengths and weaknesses of governance groups with legitimate jurisdiction over the management of natural resources within a given landscape or seascape. Without access to a suitable governance assessment tool, conservation and development practitioners may have no clear sense of the factors most likely to facilitate good governance, and no clear process for identifying how to remediate factors that militate against good governance. This 1.5 hour, lunch-time, workshop will describe a relatively simple, low-cost, expert opinion-based, method for conservation practitioners to identify the most important groups with rights to manage natural resources within a landscape or seascape, characterize a small set of factors believed to be essential elements of good natural resource governance, and assess the governance strengths and weaknesses of each group with influence over the management of natural resources within a landscape or seascape. The tool is being tested at a suite of USAID funded conservation sites, and this workshop will help raise awareness about and get feedback on the tool.

In our increasingly polarized society, environmental conflicts endanger the future health of our ecosystems. The environment - natural and cultural - is threatened as conflicting demands from a growing and mobile population increase. Stakeholders, agencies and scientists struggle to find common ground, and without a way to resolve these conflicts in an equitable and sustainable way, battles will continue, hostility will escalate, and environmental and conservation efforts will suffer. This interactive session will use examples of environmental mediation cases that focus on endangered species protection, hazardous waste storage, federal Indian policy, and more. Participants will see how these conflicts turn not on data, legal merits or the moral justness of the cause, but on the human dimensions of participants. The power of a single personality, cultural differences (from corporate to ethnic),historical trauma, or anecdotal data can derail the best solution. Sensitivity to these issues can help anyone trying to broker a solution lead a group to mutual respect and eventual agreement. In this workshop, Moore will share insights from her experience in the trenches of environmental conflict resolution and lead discussions to help participants understand the dynamics of conflict, approaches to resolution, and their own particular strengths and weaknesses in the conflict arena.

The soil ecosystem reflects both natural and human disturbance. For example, deforestation, agriculture, and urbanization can dramatically alter soil biota. Human impacts have mainly focused on agricultural areas. Much less is known on the function of soil communities in urban areas, and whether these effects are similar across regional and global scales. For example, are urban soil processes and communities more similar across global scales than the native soil ecosystems replaced by urban development? Soil science is a declining discipline in our institutions of higher learning, even while soils are being recognized as an important component of urban ecosystems and the services they provide. Urban soils are excellent in situ laboratories to learn about ecological systems and biological conservation. Moreover, citizen science is increasingly being recognized as a strategy to conduct widespread comparisons across different sites and habitats. This focus group represents an exciting opportunity to develop a network that utilizes urban soil ecosystems as a platform to engage and link students and citizen scientists from cities and towns worldwide into conducting useful scientific research. The proposed focus group will connect 1) various cultures and systems because its aim is to establish an international network, 2) disciplines, such as biology, geochemistry, landscape ecology and education, and 3) stakeholders by involving scientists, students and residents.

The proposed workshop will share results from a successful cross-disciplinary problem-based undergraduate conservation curriculum, SEA Semester: Marine Biodiversity and Conservation (MBC). The semester-long curriculum models an innovative three-stage approach to learning and practice. During the initial discovery phase students build a conceptual framework that identifies gaps in biodiversity research and critical problems associated with ocean conservation. Students then develop and implement a biodiversity science plan during a month-long research cruise. The final synthesis and application phase allows students to synthesize their scientific results, develop comprehensive science-based policy recommendations, and defend their findings to scientists and public stakeholders. The curriculum by necessity breaks down conceptual walls that traditionally separate teaching of science and public policy and offers practical experience that transcends both disciplines. Undergraduate scientists in MBC are equipped with a foundation in cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration that the conservation community needs in order to address the challenges of today and to chart a hopeful path for tomorrow. While MBC specifically addresses conservation challenges on the high seas, such a curriculum that integrates biodiversity data collection with construction of public policy can be applied as a template at any school. The proposed workshop is geared toward undergraduate faculty.

Want to be published in an international journal? Young scientists will find advice and guidance on writing for journals from the editors of Conservation Biology and Biological Conservation in this lunchtime workshop. Learn about the publishing process and find tips on how to have your work published in international scientific journals. This lunchtime workshop includes a question and answer session with journal editors.

SCB's International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB) is the most important international meeting for conservation professionals and students.

ICCBs are a forum for addressing conservation challenges and for presenting new research and developments in conservation science and practice.

Most importantly, ICCBs connect our global community of conservation professionals and are the major networking outlet for anyone interested in conservation.